How to treat a sick office: Go after hidden environmental factors

Beyond the germs that float around physicians' offices, poor air quality could be taking a toll.

By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, AMNews correspondent. Dec. 18, 2006.

The day was a grueling, back-to-back string of appointments. Now the patients have been seen, the office is quiet and the custodial crew gone. On the surface, all is peaceful.

But hidden from view, nestled in carpet fibers and chair foam, are thousands of microbes devouring dust the vacuum cleaner just stirred up. They have been lying in wait for the moisture from shoes, perspiring bodies and a child's spilled drink to mix into the perfect microbial cocktail -- a power drink to fuel their efforts to grow, replicate and reproduce. The new cabinets and carpet in renovated exam rooms also are making mischief, emitting formaldehyde gasses. And the half million spores from that dime-sized patch of mold in the well-baby play area will spew into the air as soon as someone walks across the spot.

"There are so many sources of bacteria and poor indoor air quality," says Jeffrey May, author of My Office Is Killing Me! and principal scientist for May Indoor Air Investigations in Cambridge, Mass. "Maybe the carpet got wet when it was cleaned or the fresh air vent is closed. If the relative humidity is too high, mildew starts growing."

Indoor air pollution consistently ranks among the top five environmental risks to public health, the Environmental Protection Agency says. Indoor levels can reach two to five times, sometimes 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. Often linked to the energy crisis of the 1970s, which spurred tightly sealed spaces, unhealthy indoor air occurs when there is little or no fresh air to dilute irritants.